A cereal tweet exposes serial unfairness

(NNPA)—MSNBC’s President Phil Griffin was forced to apologize last week for an incendiary and grossly unfair tweet about conservatives. This all got started with a simple TV commercial for Cheerios breakfast cereal. The only thing that was noteworthy about the commercial, which ran during the Super Bowl on Sunday, was that it featured an interracial married couple (one man and one woman), with a beautiful bi-racial 6-year-old daughter.

Some anonymous employee (MSNBC refuses to name the person) felt comfortable tweeting the following from MSNBC’s official twitter account: “Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family.”

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus demanded an apology from Griffin and barred all RNC employees and surrogates from appearing on MSNBC.

Priebus’ move forced Griffin to issue this apology: “The tweet last night (last Wednesday) was outrageous and unacceptable. We immediately acknowledged that it was offensive and wrong, apologized, and deleted it. We have dismissed the person responsible for the tweet. I personally apologize to Mr. Priebus and to everyone offended. At [MSNBC] we believe in passionate, strong debate about the issues and we invite voices from all sides to participate. That will never change.”